Optimization or Optimisation?

[jaca]

This may seem a very silly question, but as I am Canadian, on my web site, and in Meta Tags, I spell Search Engine "Optimization". Now, this page has not been indexed. The rest of my site is. Could it be the spelling?

I hope this question doesn't sound to 'DUH'

Jan

[ronniethedodger]

Originally Posted by jaca

This may seem a very silly question, but as I am Canadian, on my web site, and in Meta Tags, I spell Search Engine "Optimization". Now, this page has not been indexed. The rest of my site is. Could it be the spelling?

I hope this question doesn't sound to 'DUH'

Jan

It is definitely not 'DUH'! Mispelt words will not be cause for a page not being indexed.

What is the url to the page? And how long have you had the page up?

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by jaca

This may seem a very silly question, but as I am Canadian, on my web site, and in Meta Tags, I spell Search Engine "Optimization". Now, this page has not been indexed. The rest of my site is. Could it be the spelling?

"optimization" is the North American version; "optimisation" the British/European version... so I suppose it might depend on which search engines you are submitting to but I would stick to to "z" version in Canada. If you're worried, I suppose you could always cover your bets by spelling it both ways, like one way in the title and the other in the text?

[cbp]

This is a big issue for optimisation/optimization internationally - there are heaps of other egs

colour vs color
ageing vs aging
centre vs center
labour vs labor
rumour vs rumor
etc

CBP

[minstrel]

So how do you make the decision, cbp? Base it on where you expect the bulk of your visitors to come from and optimize/optimise for that region? or do you optimise/optimize for both?

[jaca]

Thank you for all your replies.

I use Optimization. I have had the page up for over a month and my site has been indexed again, but this page is not showing up.

http://www.jbcr-virtualsolutions.com/SEO.html

Is there anything you can see in there that I am doing wrong? I thought maybe the spelling might have something to do with it.

Many Thanks!

Jan

[cbp]

So how do you make the decision

Where I can I use both spellings - I try hard to avoid making it look silly. But will usually use one version in title and text, and use the other version in a carefully worded copyright notice or disclaimer as the bottom of the page (ie the stuff that nobody reads). BOTH versions are used in the anchor text internally - usually one more than the other. Then do a keyword density analysis on how the density of the two words stack up aganist each other. Then monitor position in Google for both words and make adjustments.

Usually can get a good ranking for both, but it is usually harder for one version (so the harder version will be the one in the page title and text and more of the anchor texts).

As a side issue, those outside of North American are more familiar with these spelling differences --> so are more likely to target both versions of the spelling --> at an advantage over North America competitors.

ALSO, it would be good if Google and other SE's could do something about the differences as part of the stemming thingy and we would not have to worry about it.

CBP

[cbp]

For those unfamilar with the spelling differences, just found this site:
http://www.english-usa.net/english-spelling/

CBP

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by jaca

I have had the page up for over a month and my site has been indexed again, but this page is not showing up.

http://www.jbcr-virtualsolutions.com/SEO.html

Jan, didn't you mention this page last month as a problem page? I can't find the thread but the URL looks familiar.

The page is indexed by Google but has a PR=0 and no backlinks according to Google...

[ronniethedodger]

Originally Posted by jaca

I use Optimization. I have had the page up for over a month and my site has been indexed again, but this page is not showing up.

http://www.jbcr-virtualsolutions.com/SEO.html

Nothing wrong...it is there now. www.jbcr-virtualsolutions.com&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&c2coff=1&safe=off&filter=0]click me...click me[/url]

I remember talking about this page last week. At that time the sitemap and home page had just been re-indexed and was showing the link to the SEO page...now they have indexed it. These things take time sometimes.

Here is the www.jbcr-virtualsolutions.com/SEO.html+allinurl:www.jbcr-virtualsolutions.com&hl=en&ie=UTF-8]cached page[/url] at Google. It looks to be in order.

[jaca]

Well I am amazed Ron and all. I checked it today and nothing. Ron you found it!!

Still don't understand why no page ranking but maybe that just means a bad page.

Thanks to you all..and will keep the spelling issue in mind.

Jan

[jaca]

BTW David, I just had to say that there is a backlink on that page to/from here (Webproworld) so does that mean my page doesn't rank 'cause there is :-)

Jan

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by jaca

BTW David, I just had to say that there is a backlink on that page to/from here (Webproworld) so does that mean my page doesn't rank 'cause there is :-)

Actually, a PR=0 doesn't mean your page isn't ranked - it just means it's very low, < 1 (but it could be maybe 0.00001 or 0.07?). Also, Google is seemingly getting stingy about reporting backlinks - the most blatant is using the link:www.jbcr-virtualsolutions.com/SEO.html search phrase, which never reported all the links and now seems to embed a code in the string passed to the search engine which has the effect of having it report even less...

so who knows? now that we know it IS the same page, you muast have several links now from WPW to that page :o)

[ronniethedodger]

Originally Posted by jaca

Well I am amazed Ron and all. I checked it today and nothing. Ron you found it!!

Still don't understand why no page ranking but maybe that just means a bad page.

Thanks to you all..and will keep the spelling issue in mind.

It will take a little while longer for the page to get ranked. It has only just been indexed. Wait until the next update, and you should see some green on the bar.

An dond ask me about speling stuffs...I caint spel wortha lik. ;0)

Actually if there are variations on the spelling like you have...I would use the more prominent one (with a "z") like Minstrel suggested and mix in the variant where it is not seen by the human eye as easily...just like cbp outlined above. Another not so visible area would be the ALT parameter in image tags.

[greeneagle]

If really concerned about the spellings for different English speaking dialects- which indeed the search engines do see the British/English and other English dialectal spellings as different words, simply do something unique like a British (OOPS - How about Scotish and English differences?) webpage versions.

Surely you can play on colloquial keywords and phrases and reword sufficiently to avoid duplicate content penalties.

There is probably too much volume to consider splitting metatags and content into duplicity, triplicity or more on the same site. I think I would treat it as a translation if I were that concerned about doing International business and subsequent keyword and keyphrase rankings. Having different English versions may be a novelty that would tweak interest, if done well.

Ken

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

There is probably too much volume to consider splitting metatags and content into duplicity, triplicity or more on the same site. I think I would treat it as a translation if I were that concerned about doing International business and subsequent keyword and keyphrase rankings.

I think that's overkill personally - we're not talking about different languages here, just different ways of spelling some of the words in that language - we are talking maybe half a dozen dually-spelled words on an average web page and I doubt that even half of them would be critical keywords - far easier to work in alternate spellings than to try to put up and maintain whole new pages.

[greeneagle]

England
Scotland
Ireland
USA
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
We speak and spell differently. Spanish is even worse. One of my brothers speaks 28 dialects of Spanish (at last count), not to mention the fact that technical Spanish is a another language by itself!
Let's go for a real show-down; Texican, Mexican and Spaniard...
How does everyone else get past these border variances in the search engines?
Ken

[minstrel]

Spiders don't "hear" words, they only have to "read" them, so how many different pronunciations of a word there may be (dialects) doesn't matter... neither, in the majority of cases, do variations in slang terminology - there are still only two "real" variations on spelling, the ones that are (at least purportedly) taught in schools: American or US English and British English.

Some of the countries you mention also use languages in addition to English (including Canada and the US) but that is a very different issue and then if you want to market in the other languages or internationally you have no choice but to duplicate your sites. That's not really a search engine question, however, because people who are going to read your site in Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese, etc., will also be using search engines in that language to find you. That's also not the fous of this thread, which was how to handle the problem of US versus British spelling.

[greeneagle]

The point is (and is on topic) that if you do a search for a differently spelled keyword or keyphrase (whether in or out of dialectual differences), if spelled differently between same language speaking countries, the search engines DO NOT RECOGNIZE IT AS THE SAME WORD!, nor the same keyphrase. - How is this mastered by those in the know?, especially when it can include multiple spellings?

Different dialects come up only because completely different keyphrases may be used in searches between "same language" - different dialect (different word meaning) cultures.

more than that! -- ie... If I am going to take a business trip to London and I want to find a bar where I can get smashed after a hard day's work.... then I better research "pubs" to get "pissed" at.

This is a pretty significant question.

I don't have a clue.

Ken